


a guest in your own home

by Talahui



Category: Men's Hockey RPF
Genre: Getting Together, Home, M/M, Rare Pairings, Starting Over, accidental boyfriend acquisition, house swap, internalized trade angst
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-14
Updated: 2020-02-14
Packaged: 2021-02-26 12:03:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,185
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22711990
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Talahui/pseuds/Talahui
Summary: He knows that he and Tyson had been friends--best friends--and he can’t blame the guy for keeping his distance. Naz had cost him his best friend. It didn’t matter that Naz had lost his family and his boys and the only place that had ever been home. He was the one who had to prove he was worth the price.“You coming in or what?”MacKinnon jerks his chin in a single nod and steps inside.
Relationships: Nazem Kadri/Nathan MacKinnon
Comments: 29
Kudos: 100
Collections: 2 Hots: #boysarehot Avs Valentines 2020 fic challenge





	a guest in your own home

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Japery](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Japery/gifts).
  * In response to a prompt by [Japery](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Japery/pseuds/Japery) in the [2hots](https://archiveofourown.org/collections/2hots) collection. 

> Title is from Coming Home by Diddy (featuring Skylar Grey)
> 
> Thank you to em and aj for beta-ing the first half and telling me where my notes had gone astray. Your girl has never met a deadline she didn't ignore, so this was finished at 3 a.m. so any final mistakes are all mine.
> 
> finally--regular rpf disclaimer that this piece of fiction in no way represents the actual human beings and cats whose names and public personas have been borrowed to tell this story. If you found this by googling your name or the name of someone you know, congratulations on an ao3 account. Please hit that back button.

Andy invites him to his training camp in Vail at the end of July. Though it's Andy who makes the call, Naz is sure it was Sid's idea to bring him in. Sidney Crosby is at his best when competition is highest, and right now Nate tops that list. If jump starting his and Nate’s on-ice chemistry will make Nate a better competitor, Naz is happy to show up to make that happen.

Sid must be on to something because they win together for the first time that week. He hopes they win together for years to come.

_/

He can’t sleep that first night, searching for the city sounds that have lulled him to sleep for years and being met by suburban silence. Everything about Tyson’s house feels foreign except for the familiar weight of Jazzy curled at his feet. She had taken to her new bed with surprising ease, settling into the too-soft mattress like she’d always belonged in Denver.

Naz had left a basket of local Toronto snacks for Tyson when he’d left: syrup and Timmies and the real Smarties that didn’t taste like chalk and a giant bag of ketchup flavoured chips. He regrets not sending himself a care package full of the same. 

He hadn’t expected to be homesick for a place that had been so cruel, but for all the vitriol Toronto had hurled at him over the years, it was still home in a way that only the place you’d been young in could be. London. Kitchener. Toronto. Four hundred kilometres that fenced in his entire life. Now there was Denver with its sprawling mountains and infinite skies and no endless stream of relatives two hours down the 403. His sisters wouldn’t drop in unannounced for a weekend in the city, a tupperware full of his grandma’s fatayer to make him forget they’d never asked if they could visit--not that he ever needed them to.

He loved the ways they took up space, how all four of them seemed to expand in order to fill any room they entered. Tyson’s house was so much bigger than Naz’s condo in Toronto. He’d love to see if they could make this house feel small.

_/

He's familiar enough with his new team. Despite how invisible they’d been to most of Canada for much of his career, they’d been hard to miss in the lead up to the All-Star game, and even the Leafs--center of the hockey universe--had noticed how much the guys on that team seemed to genuinely like each other, so Naz isn’t exactly surprised when he finds the entire Avalanche leadership group on the front porch three days after he moves in.

“We’re taking you to breakfast,” Landeskog says without preamble. “Lucille’s. Best beignets in the city.”

“He’s lying,” Johnson says, and Naz can’t tell if he’s joking. “But you still probably want to put some pants on.”

Landeskog shoves Johnson through the front door like he’s probably done it a hundred times, and Johnson goes easily, tossing his keys into the basket Tyson keeps on his entryway table as he wanders toward the kitchen, Landeskog at his heels. Naz goes to shut the door, trying to shake off the overwhelming sense of being railroaded, but finds MacKinnon loitering at the threshold, rocking back on his heels like Naz has put some kind of vampire curse on the house that’s preventing him from entering.

He knows that he and Tyson had been friends--best friends--and he can’t blame the guy for keeping his distance. Naz had cost him his best friend. It didn’t matter that Naz had lost his family and his boys and the only place that had ever been home. He was the one who had to prove he was worth the price.

“You coming in or what?”

MacKinnon jerks his chin in a single nod and steps inside.

_/

By the end of the preseason the Avalanche locker room already feels lived in. There are so many new guys this season that everyone is feeling out how they fit together: the guys who have been here for years making space for the ones who were sent here just as readily as they did for the ones who chose Denver for themselves. It’s not just the players either. Everyone is so kind, and that comes as a surprise in a way he wishes it didn’t.

He wouldn’t have blamed them for resenting him a little. He could handle it. He’s had a lot of practice shouldering the blame of an entire city.

_/

Nate lives down the street from Tyson’s place. Gabe had mentioned it that first time they’d stopped by in an offhanded way like Naz should expect Nate to come over a lot, but he never does. Not until Naz wakes up on a rare off day in early November to find Nate bent over his stove and wearing an apron.

“Hey?” Naz asks like he’s approaching an easily spooked animal. “Everything good?”

Nate jumps, surprised, sending the spatula he was holding soaring over his shoulder. “Fuck. I forgot.” He crouches down to wipe up the fallen eggs, but even with his back turned, Naz can see his neck turn a bright pink.

“Hey, you’re not gonna catch me complaining about waking up to a guy making me breakfast,” Naz says, kneeling beside Nate so he can knock their shoulders together. He hopes Nate will take it for the declaration it is.

There’d been rumors about Nate for years, but no one Naz had ever heard it from knew first hand. It had always just been stories from Juniors and a friendship with Drouin that no one quite believed. Maybe a little wishful thinking, if they were being honest.

Nate smiles, a barely there upturn of his lips that Naz will absolutely call a win. “That’s how I seduce all the boys.”

He sticks around for breakfast, and when he leaves after helping to clean his dishes it feels like the start of something, but the next day at practice Naz finds Nate’s key to Tyson’s place taped to his locker. Nate never mentions his early morning visit, but he moves into the penthouse he hasn’t finished renovating two weeks later, so Naz figures there isn’t much else to say.

_/

Except Nate shows up again the night after Toronto beats them at home. Naz feels raw, a live wire frayed at both ends. He’s already lost his stamina for the media circus that precedes and follows the Leafs, but being with the boys again--seeing them in this place that was now his--was like poking at an old wound and realizing it hadn’t actually healed right. They didn’t belong here, and he didn’t belong with them anymore.

When he pulls the door open to find Nate fumbling to fit one of his keys into the lock, it takes him a minute to realize that Nate’s drunk. “Fuck,” he mumbles, shoving his keys at Naz and shouldering past him into the house. “You’re not Tys.”

So maye Naz isn’t the worst off.

Nate manages to toe off his shoes and shove them into the boot bin before shrugging off his coat and letting it puddle at his feet. “Did you change the locks so I can’t come?”

“No,” Naz manages, ducking down to collect Nate’s coat. The key’s still in his locker if Nate really wanted it. “You can always come over.”

Nate sways a little, bumping his shoulder with Naz’s, and he can’t tell if it was intentional or just the internal sea legs that came with too much alcohol, but when Nate doesn’t tilt back the other way he lets himself lean into the warmth.

“Want me to call you an uber home?” he asks, and Nate shakes his head.

“Was already at home,” he says. “Took an uber here.”

Naz should have known the shoes were a declaration of intent. There was no way Nate was tying any more shoelaces tonight.

“Yeah, okay.” Naz knows there are a couple of guest bedrooms down the hall from his room. His first night in the house, he’d thought about using one of them instead of the master, but Jazzy had been the deciding factor, and she knew a superior mattress when she saw one.

Apparently Nate does too, because when Naz leads him to the closest room he balks. “No, no, no. I don’t sleep here,” he insists and herds Naz into the master. He doesn’t bother stripping off his joggers before crawling under the covers of Naz’s bed and falling asleep like a drunk baby.

Even if he does hog the covers, Naz likes having someone else sleeping beside him.

_/

Nate is groaning before he even opens his eyes, throwing an arm over his face in a futile attempt to block out the mid-morning sun. “I want to die. Tequila is the devil’s juice.” Jazzy, who is an expert at coaxing the alcohol weary out of bed, nudges her forehead against Nate’s cheek and purrs until Nate begrudgingly scratches behind her ears. “At least someone in this house wants to alleviate my suffering.”

Refraining from throwing a pillow at Nate is a challenge, but Naz manages it, if only because he’s unwilling to let Jazzy be collateral damage. “If you get out of my bed, you can have as many pedialyte popsicles as you want,” Naz says, and that perks Nate up enough to drag himself into the kitchen. He drapes himself over the counter, head buried in his bicep, and makes a grabby hand with his free hand.

Once he makes his way through three popsicles, he manages to pull himself into a nearly upright position. He’s still too hungover to be truly ashamed, but he puts in a valiant effort while shoveling the spinach omelette Naz offers him into his mouth with little grace. Seeing Nate in this kitchen, how he seems to belong here in a way Naz doesn’t, makes something click, all of the pieces Nate has accidentally let slip over the last few months suddenly falling into place.

“Was Tyson your boyfriend?”

“What? No.” Naz can’t tell if Nate’s squint is incredulity or the hangover. “Do you not cuddle with your bros? Is that what’s wrong with the Leafs because Tys is definitely not gonna put up with that.”

Naz knows that’s not it. He’d been buddies with plenty of guys on the Leafs over the years, but he’d never spent the night with one of them curled around him like Nate had last night. He’d never really wanted to before now.

Whatever Nate and Tyson were was something entirely less familiar than what he was feeling about Nate, though, and that was trouble he wasn’t ready to get into, so he lets both drop.

_/

A few weeks later, Nate follows him home after a loss on autopilot and doesn't seem to realize what he’s done until he dumps two blizzards on the counter and spots Naz. "Sorry. Door was unlocked. You still want it?"

_/

It becomes a thing after that: Nate following him home after a game to pick apart their play or snagging him after practice to try a new restaurant he’d found that actually serves food that fits the meal plan. It’s nice to have someone take him under their wing even if it is unnecessary. Nate’s so sharp and funny and he sees things in a way that always manages to catch Naz by surprise. Even Nate’s legendary intensity isn’t enough to cure the warm happiness that settles in his gut whenever he’s around Nate.

He knows he’s a poor stand-in for the person Nate really wants to be sitting across the counter from, but he doesn’t mind being the person Nate passes the time with. It won’t be Naz forever. It never is.

_/

When they play in Toronto a few weeks later, it’s the old ache, only this time he’s homesick for a place he’ll never get back. He loves the 6ix, misses the way the city swallows everything whole and the familiar feeling of walking through a building he knows as well as his own name, but he doesn’t miss the media or Toronto’s fickle adoration.

He has breakfast at Johnny’s, camped out in the living room like when they were kids back in the O, and he misses the timeline where the London Knights boys were reunited for more than a single season. It’s easy to miss since it’ll never happen now, but he can almost feel what it will be like when the way it really turned out will feel like the best possible outcome. Probably when he’s in the next city and wishing he’d been what the Avs were looking for.

Most of the guys had stuck around the hotel, hoping the added rest would give them the extra boost they need to win this time, but he knows Nate is at his apartment with Tyson, and it feels like Nate will see him in a way he hasn’t before. Nate knows Naz in Denver, but having Nate see the life he’d had before his team had given up on him makes him feel small, like Nate will suddenly realize he’s a lesser version of that person.

He imagines them making breakfast in his kitchen and hopes Nate likes the floor to ceiling windows and the epic views of the Toronto skyline. He’d been so proud when he’d bought his condo, convinced himself that he could be the kind of person who lived in a place like that. He hopes Nate isn’t disappointed.

He wonders if Tyson feels like he’s playing house in someone else’s life. He wonders if Nate notices.

_/

When they’re back from the road trip, Nate invites him over--to the penthouse, not his house down the street--and it’s the first time Nate’s let anyone see it. It’s nothing like the professionally decorated place he’d expected. There are photos on the walls and a quilt that definitely hadn’t been mass produced folded across the back of his leather couch. He lets Naz wrap himself in it while they watch some movie Naz is too distracted to watch. His eyes keep finding new details about the room he wants to hold on to in case this is the only time he’s invited over, but Nate keeps looking over at him to make sure Naz likes the movie and catching him in the act.

“Dude, chill,” Naz says after the fifth or sixth time he’s done it. “The movie’s fine.”

Nate frowns, shifting his body to lean more into Naz. “No, I just...I wanna try something.” He looks at Naz like he wants his permission, so Naz nods even though he has no idea what he’s agreeing to, just knows that he likes having Nate this close.

Carefully, Nate runs gentle fingertips over Naz’s eyebrow, feather light, before letting his hand fall open across Naz’s cheek. Naz blinks slowly, letting his eyes fall to Nate’s parted lips. “Can I?” Nate aks, and this time Naz knows exactly what’s coming.

For all of Nate’s lead up, the kiss is over almost before Naz realizes it’s happening, but when they pull apart, Nate looks thoughtful.

“Do you do that with your bros too?” Naz asks. It’s asinine, but he still wants to be sure.

“No,” Nate huffs. “Do you?”

Naz can’t help but grin a little. He feels the way he imagines it would have felt to be fifteen and finding out the guy he’d liked for ages was interested. “No.”

“Good,” Nate says, and this time he doesn’t bother being gentle when he closes the distance between their bodies. “We should probably try again then. You haven’t seen my A game yet.”

Naz doesn’t hesitate, sinking his fingers into the soft hairs at the back of Nate’s head and pulling him the rest of the way down. If kissing Nate is anything like playing with him on the ice, Naz absolutely wants to see what else he can do.

_/

December and January are a slog of solitary wins strung together with loses, but he has Nate sliding into the seat across from his at breakfast or sitting a little closer than necessary on the bus to the next arena on the list. He likes being the person Nate passes the time with in this way too, likes getting to be this kind of person, an acoustic version of himself that’s been stripped down to the essentials. The whole thing feels like a miracle, really, and he doesn’t take for granted every time he finds the back of the net or the Avs notch another win or he wakes up with Nate in the bed next to him, his arms and legs always seeking a point of contact.

His entire career he’s heard people say that every time you’re traded it gets a little easier for the team to do it to you again, and he knows he can’t mess up like he has before without being sent somewhere else. Colorado is the best possible world, but he doesn’t kid himself by believing this is anything less than exile. If Toronto could do it, there’s nothing stopping Denver from doing it again.

He watches Nate sleep in the sliver of sunlight poking through the curtains and feels unnecessarily soft about this man he’s not supposed to love: his straight nose, the blonde eyelashes disappearing against his cheeks, the freckles sprinkling his shoulders like constellations Naz could trace for hours. These quiet mornings make it easy for him to feel like they’ll have forever, but this is Tyson’s bed and Tyson’s home and Tyson’s best friend, and it will always be a little bit Tyson’s team. All of it is finite. 

_/

Most days it’s easy not to think about, but then he’ll make the mistake of opening twitter or listening to the post game or letting his mom pass the phone over to his dad after a particularly poor performance and he remembers this is just one stop.

Everything falls apart in February thanks to Minnesota. He doesn’t have the same hatred for them that the guys who’ve played in Denver longer do, but they’ve certainly made their case. Lower body. Weeks, not days.

Nate tries to cheer him up, even skypes Naz’s grandma so she can walk him through making fatayer, but it feels like Nate is admitting Naz might really be out for the long term by helping him break the meal plan, and Naz can’t let that happen. This can’t be the end of his season. He hasn’t proven himself yet.

So when the cat jumps up on the counter to scavenge the leftovers on their plates and Nate says, “You really shouldn't let Jazzy eat that. It’ll make her sick,” Naz knows that he can’t keep playing house.

He doesn’t have his dad telling his coaches to punch him in the head when he messes up any more, but he still has his dad’s voice in the back of his head reminding him of his place in this city and on this team and with his teammates. He’d let himself pretend he could build a home here, convinced himself that Nate could somehow be a part of that.

“You should go home,” Naz says. “I’m tired.”

Nate cradles Jazzy to his chest, distracting her by running his thumb between her ears and refusing to look directly at Naz. “Are you mad at me?”

“No.” The word catches in his throat. He doesn’t want Nate to think it’s his fault. “I just want to go to bed. By myself.”

Nate never seems small, but this is the closest thing to shrinking in on himself Naz has seen, so he kisses Nate at the door and pours all of the gratitude he has for the moments Nate gave him these last few months into the goodbye.

_/

He stops saying yes when Nate asks if he wants him to bring over dinner and starts locking the front door in case he decides to show up announced. It takes a while, but Nate eventually gets the picture.

**Is this you breaking up with me?** Nate texts when Naz sends his calls to voicemail three times in a row. 

They’d never used the word boyfriends--Naz had never used that word for any of the men he’d dated in Toronto either, not since he was eighteen and had introduced Khalid to his parents and his father had said it was time for him to put such childish things behind him if he was serious about the NHL--but that’s what they had been. Past tense. No point worrying about what to call themselves now.

He’s back more quickly than they’d expected, though not as quick as he’d have liked, and they roll into the postseason more confident than any of them have felt in years. He still has time to show them he won’t make the same mistakes he had before.

Belley hip checks him on the way off the ice after a hard fought win against the Coyotes and pulls him into his side so he can pat the top of his helmet. “You’re doing great,” he says. “You were made for playoffs.”

Naz forces his shoulders down and tries not to sound too self-pitying when he says, “At least I’ve matched last year’s playoff high.”

“Hey,” Belley says sharply, and he may not be wearing the A but he might as well be. “That was Toronto bullshit. Nobody here thinks about you like that.” Naz shrugs, but Belley is relentless. “We bring out the best in each other, okay? That’s what the Avs do.”

It’s pride that makes him say it, but he’s not wrong. So many guys had had record breaking years--_ curse _ breaking years--and they’d done it together. Val had gone from a season of goal posts and lucky goalies to a personal best. Burky had shown his old team what more minutes could have gotten them. Calvy and Donny and even Belley himself had thrived.

“Our time with hockey is so short,” Belley says, and he would know. He’d had a year of medical school under his belt by the time he’d finally cracked an NHL roster, twenty-nine years old and more than a decade removed from his first World Cup. Nothing was guaranteed--not a team, not a spot on the roster. “We make it what it is for as long as we can. Not them.”

_/

Naz doesn’t even wait for an appropriate hour, just makes his decision and shows up on Nate’s doorstep without bothering to look at the time. Nate answers the door in his slippers and a threadbare t-shirt that shows the strain the season has had on his body.

“Did Charlie let you up?” Nate asks between a yawn, and it sounds too tired to be an accusation.

Naz mimes zipping his lips and hopes Nate accepts it with the goodwill it was intended in. “I can keep a secret.”

“Yeah,” Nate sighs, not moving from the door jam, and Naz knows this is his last chance to make things right by finally being honest.

“Did you mean it before?”

“Mean what?” Nate’s forehead wrinkles, and Naz can imagine the old man he’ll be one day. He’d really like to know that person.

“You and me. Did you mean it?”

Something in Nate’s expression softens, and all the hard lines he’s been carrying this last half of the season melt away. “Of course I meant it,” he says and turns his body just enough to be an invitation. “You were the best thing to happen to me this season.”

“Oh,” Naz whispers, a little unprepared for a follow up, but Nate smiles just a little and that’s enough for him to work with. “Good. Me too.” Nate takes a step back, drawing him forward, and Naz follows. “I don’t want to be broken up,” he admits.

“I never wanted to be broken up.”

“Break up cancelled then.” Naz links his index finger with Nate’s and tugs gently. “But only if you let me call you my boyfriend.”

“Yeah,” Nate agrees, breathless and grinning. “Constantly. Until EJ starts fining us for liking each other too much.” 

Neither of them can stop smiling, even when Nate drags him into a kiss.

_/

Naz buys a house before the new season starts and pays someone to pack what’s left of his life in Toronto into boxes and drive them down. He’s not ready to have the guys over to see it yet, but he does get an extra key made, puts it in a box, and gives it to Nate in case he ever needs it. 

“Like for emergencies?” he asks. 

“Sure,” Naz agrees. 

“Any kind of emergency?” 

Naz rolls his eyes. “Yeah, Nate, being horny absolutely qualifies as an emergency.” 

Nate cups Naz’s chin gently in his hands and presses their foreheads together. “Just making sure.”


End file.
